Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam

Established in the year 1983, this University is one of the 4 affiliating Universities in Kerala. It is set over 100 acres in the Priyadarshini Hills Campus at Athirampuzha, 13 km. off of Kottayam. This University also has 10 satellite campuses and all of the University’s teaching programmes are conducted under the Credit and Semester System (CSS) which is known for its innovative curricula and a learner-oriented approach. There are constant developments being made in different programmes and the practice of interactive student-teacher interactions during the lectures ensures that there is a more democratic and an engaging environment for students to study in. Not only that, some of the faculty and research scholars have gained widespread recognition for their research publications. Some have even gained international recognition.

The University Library is one of the big assets that this University has. It was established in the year 1989. It provides a learning environment which includes individual work spaces, rooms for group study and teaching, audio - visual access and online information retrieval system. The Library has access to more than 7500 e-journals and databases including SciFinder Scholar and Web of Science. The Library also has access to major online databases, such as EBSCO, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, Oxford Scholarship Online, IEEE, all Society Periodicals Package etc. With the launching of the Mahatma Gandhi University Online Theses Digital Library, it has become the first Indian University to adopt Open Access of its doctoral research theses to the academics worldwide through www.mgutheses.in The University Library has a collection of 57,350 books, 2,500 e-books, 2,050 theses and 7,500 bound volumes of journals. In addition to this, the library subscribes 253 current Indian (169) and Foreign (84) journals, 4 Online Databases and 4 Online Journal Archives.

To promote the artistic, literary, cultural, athletic and the differently-abled students, a large number of scholarships have been introduced - ASPIRE, INSPIRE, THANMA and AQUIRE. The University has given the world a number of accomplished alumni. Some of which include Rahul R Nair who was in the team of Prof Andre Geim whose work on Graphene won the Nobel Prize. He is currently in the Royal Society University Research Fellow at University of Manchester, Vinu Vikram -Leader of the Team which generated the Dark Matter Map of the Universe, Naslim Neelamkodan discovered the most Zirconium rich star till date and Harsha S Kumar who discovered a Magnetar and is currently a Post Doctoral Fellow at University of Manitoba, Canada.

The University has had close collaboration for academic, research and extension programmes with a number of institutions like ISRO, UGC, DIT, DST, BARC, Nano Mission, etc. Not only that, the University is also in active collaboration with reputed international institutions like the Marx Planck Institute of Technology (Germany), Brown University (U.S.A.), University of Nantes (France), California Institute of Technology (U.S.A.), etc.